Dynamic circuit is highly responsive to rolling off the guitar’s volume and preserves the guitar’s high end when the volume is rolled off.

Cream chicken-head knobs for precise positioning and high visibility on dark stages

I am not shredder; never was, never will be. It’s just not my style. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the sound of distortion and playing with a distorted sound. In fact, to me, there’s nothing like the sweet, sustained, and compressed tone of saturated power tubes, or the dirty color that comes from a great overdrive or distortion box. Thus, I’ve had several stomps over the years from DS-1’s to MXR’s to my current line up of a Tube Screamer, Bad Monkey and an OCD. Each pedal has its own unique character, and I employ all of them either individually or by chaining a couple together. It now looks like I’m going to add to my lineup.

When I first heard about the VOX Satchurator, I got excited. I figured anything that was designed and built to Joe Satriani’s specifications had to at least be something to take a good look at, if not outright buy. Plus, with VOX being known for high-quality, I knew that whatever was produced from this partnership would not be crap. So I knew that it would be a good bet that I’d get this pedal. In fact, I’m writing this review right after my test. But luckily, I’m not THAT impulsive that I left the store with one in hand – though I have been known to buy first think later. Luckily I have my trusty GAS Calculator to keep those impulses in check. 🙂 I scored a 5, which is on the high side of still considering the gear and just one point below of getting it, but I didn’t score a 6 or above, so I held back on my purchase for now (honestly, it’s a matter of available funds 🙂 ). Now back to our regularly scheduled program….

Okay… if you read no further, please read this:

THE SATURATOR WILL NOT MAKE YOU SOUND LIKE JOE SATRIANI!!!

No one sounds like Satch, but Professor Satchifunkilus himself. You may use the exact same equipment (I used a JSX for my test, but I used a PRS SE Custom Semi-hollowbody for one of the guitars and a Strat and Epiphone Les Paul for the others). You may even have incredible technique that matches or surpasses the maestro, but you will not sound exactly like him. I’m only saying this because I don’t want you to get your hopes up. What you do get though, is the same TYPE of distortion tone that Satch gets. What you do with that is entirely up to how you play; and that is a good thing. Okay, ’nuff said.

Here’s my take on the Satchurator: Forget about how cool it looks – it looks AWESOME, by the way – the Satchurator is an incredibly versatile distortion box that can serve up mild grind to unadulterated, in-your-face, lewd, crude, with a mouth full of food snarl (got that saying from Guitar Player mag 🙂 ). It also has incredible attack and volume knob sensitivity at any volume level.

The Satchurator is also not for the faint of heart. Once you switch on the box, you get breakup, even with the gain swept to zero. In other words, once it’s on, you’re committed to having even modest amounts of distortion in your signal. To coin a phrase from a close friend, “This ain’t for pussies.” But the cool thing is that the distortion is highly controllable based upon your guitar’s volume knob and how you attack the strings. From a volume knob perspective, I just DIG how the Satchurator responds to volume knob settings. Want less distortion, just sweep your volume down. Want more bite, do the opposite.

When I test pedals, I usually start out with everything set in the 12 o’clock setting. Through my test, which was about 45 minutes, I only moved the gain knob twice: All the way down to get a gorgeous bluesy breakup, then all the way up to see how bad the pedal clipped, which surprisingly enough, it didn’t do. For the rest of the test, I just kept the gain set at the centerline, then used a combination of attack and volume knob sweeps to dial in the right amount of distortion that I wanted. From a gigging standpoint, the less you have to bend over or crouch to set pedals, the better.

It has been noted that Satch actually plugs the Satchurator into a clean amp, then sweeps the gain knob. Personally, I like the sound that power tubes produce, so I set the JSX into the first gain stage, but left it pretty clean, allowing the Satchurator to drive the tubes into breakup. I do have to say that I loved that combination of tube breakup along with the Satchurator distortion.

More really is more…

There’s an interesting switch on the right side of the pedal called “More.” This switch provides even more gain when you switch it on. It’s great for cutting through a mix. The interesting thing is that the boost effect is less dramatic with higher gain settings on the pedal. With the gain knob pegged, pressing More definitely adds more, but it’s just a bit more, like going from 10 to 11 on your amp. Where I had it set at 12 o’clock, the More switch was nicely dramtic, and it’s something that I’ll definitely be using when I gig.

Will play nice with the other kids...

I didn’t get to try this feature out, but the Satchurator also includes a toggle switch called “Pad.” Apparently, this allows the pedal to play well with high output pedals like wah pedals and not change your tone. It essentially “pads” their signals so the Satchurator’s tone doesn’t fluctuate wildly. I’ve never seen a pedal that had this feature. Very, very useful. Once I put the Satchurator in my chain, I’ll definitely be using the “Pad” to help tame my vibe pedal that could potentially cause wild tonal fluctuations, which it does with my OCD, which doesn’t like to be played with the vibe.

So how did it REALLY perform…

I wish I had more time to try out a couple of other amps, but alas, I just didn’t. But I did try it out with three guitars, so that’s good. Here’s my synopsis:

The first guitar I played it with was PRS SE Custom. This is a semi-hollowbody guitar. I’m glad I switched to another guitar because I wouldn’t buy the pedal if I just did my review with just that guitar. It’s not that the guitar was bad, and it wasn’t that the tone that was produced was bad. It’s just that the combination of this particular guitar with the Satchurator was uninspiring. I wasn’t blown away.

After the PRS, I switched to a Strat, and my inspiration meter went through the roof! The sound was FAN-FREAKIN’-TASTIC!!! I had the same result with Epi LP I plugged in. In other words, at least from my perspective, the Satchurator sound best with solid body guitars. To be fair, I probably could’ve coaxed a great sound using the PRS, but with limited time, I didn’t have the patience. And in a gigging situation, the last thing you want to do is tweak.

Wrapping it up

As I mentioned above, this pedal will not make you sound like Satch, but it will give you the same kind of distortion Satch employs. I love that kind of distortion. It’s not super-compressed, but it’s also not so open that it comes across as hollow. As with Baby Bear’s porridge in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” it’s just right!

34 Responses

Great review Gdawg. The “pad” switch sounds like a great option for using a wah at the front end of a signal path as well. Let us know if you decide to pull the trigger. Sounds like it’d be a great supplement to the low-gain tube screamers on any pedal board.

Hey . . they should call it snatcherater . . .lol. jk. In all seriosness . . it is wayyy tooo gainny.I ran it through my ac 30, what a dissapointment. I was totally stoked when this thing came out at namm . . but i was totally disappointed when I got it home. I brought it back for the 30/30 guarantee . . know what im sayin? I ended up with a pedal called GRISTLE KING . . check that out !! latr dudes.

I have the Gristle King’s little brother the DGTM (diabolical gristle tone manipulator). It kills….a regular Santana in a box. A fabulous pedal made by a small boutique electronics guru and fellow Cheesehead from central Wisconsin– T C Jauernig. I think the Gristle King is a combination DGTM and Luxury Drive in one pedal. Very cool. I occasionally see them used floating around Wisconsin… I intend to eventually own one. Ive tried the G King, very good choice. The Gristle King was designed for- and is the pedal of choice for guitar virtuoso Greg Koch.

Hey guys ! yes, the gristle king is a combo of the two . . It is by fAR the neetest od/ distortion i’ve ever played through. not only do you get the best bof both worlds, but it literally has two , Hand wired channels. INFINATE posibilities! you can run od 1 through od 2 , or vice versa, whatever your amp set up, you can find the right combo. Definately worth the bread. I think I paid something like 200 dallars from a fellow gear head. he just happened to buy two . . .because he knew I’d want one . . lol it also has a couple of other neet features . Again . .do some research dawg. Its worth it ! Oh and hey . .speaking of cheese heads . .I just bought on of North coast music’s AC 30 trolleys . . OMG it is friggen awsome !! Gary at ncm really knows VOX. Alright . . past my bedtime gnight fellas.

Thanks for the review Goof! I’ve been thinking about trying out the Satchurator myself for a different crunch tone. I like it when they make them with “more” switches to burn through leads. Gonna check it out.

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I bought my Satchurator before X-mas and still have it – but I am not happy with it. First off I love the sounds and I love shredding with it in the cellar for hours – but, with my Marshall DSL in clean channel it clips really badly and makes a bad burping break-up noise – I tried it in the rehearsal room with my ESP and had to stop – I thought my speakers were blowing! I tried it with my Strat with a Marshall 50 Plexi and that was better – yet when I hit the strings hard it burps the speakers.

You might try reducing the Volume and Gain a bit on the Satchurator and upping the Gain on your amp to get to the edge of the breakup on the amp, using the amp Volume to control your overall volume. Use the Satchurator to push the amp into full breakup. Okay, that’s for the DSL.

If you have a non-master volume Plexi, you can set it up the same way by cranking the volume to about 3pm, then using the Satchurator to push it over the top.

I’ve found Marshalls work best when letting them do most of the saturation work, then using a pedal like a booster or overdrive to get them the rest of the way, which brings to mind perhaps the best method for using any overdrive pedals.

In my experience, overdrive pedals work best when interacting with your amp, adding their gain and EQ signature to the tonal mix, but not providing all the distortion themselves. If you need distortion at lower volumes, you might consider getting a distortion pedal that has a clipping circuit with much more internal gain.

There is another thing you can try, although never had this problem yet myself (but have heard of this solution). Place a pedal with buffered bypass wiring (i.e. boss pedal, such as even their tuner, or their popular delay) after the distortion. The buffered bypass is supposed to condition the sound enough that it will prevent clipping. It may suck some tone, but if your using only one buffered bypass in your rig it should be unnoticeable.

Nothing wrong with a good signal buffer circuit.
Little Boss buffers are NOT good and will tone suck your signal. Good ones like Visual Sound and Morely’s circuits will actually improve your signal and tone and hush the noise floor hiss. While it is easy to put a buffer before dist boxes it is not always so easy after them.

I do not like to run things after my high gains as it alters the response. There is ood buffer type box I need after it, so it would have to be a transparent nothing as I use the clean boosts I have built into my amp when I want any boost after the gains or OD.

I do not recommend tuners in line and those crappy little Boss buffers are going to effect your tone. Any Visual Sound pedal even when NOT on has their really great buffer circuit. I do not have one at the moment as I traded so much off, but truly is the best buffer circuit I have ever heard. I find my usual problems are solved by using my humbucklers even my single coil dual rails dampen the noise floor over the std single coils which will hiss when not being played.

A fine point was made about pickups and wacking the input level of a box. You can get HBs too close. Not so much with single coils. I have buffers in front of my Satchurator which help a lot.

Thanks for the reply – I have tried out all settings and I am always left scratching my head. I have tried everything and it seems nobody else has this problem – I was actually considering sending the pedal back under garantee.

Yet it but I think I have found the problem. My ESP guitar has a LH-100 hot ‘middy’ pickup and it seems to over-load the Satchurator. I tried another guitar today and the problem was gone. I find this remarkable as I have used this guitar for 15 years with dozens of amps and pedals and never had this at all – in fact, the replacement guitar has an equally hot Seymour Duncan humbucker so it does not add up. I guess my ESP has crept up very close to the tolerance levels of the Satchurator and is agitating it. I tried the PAD on & off but that did not help in this case.

So, I am going back to the cellar shortly to try it all out again in case it was a fluke.

I am beginning to think mine is not right. I can get it to fail with abolutely neutral amp settings and yet nobody else has the same problem. It also breaks up badly with my pals guitar – a standard Epiphone Les Paul. I have tried it at all volumes and it is worse when I turn down the volume on the pedal – if I strike lets say the thick E string at 3rd position (G) then it overloads the signal and burps the speakers – ps I have 3 Marshall cabs and it happens on all. In the last 4 months I have tried 6 other pedals with the same guitars, amps and cables and not one of them ever came close to overload, which IMO means my gear is ok.

I guess I will ave to sell in on FleaBay or send it back to the dealer but I probably don*t have the invoice anymore… oh well.

That sucks. It sounds like something is definitely wrong with the unit from what you’re describing. Since you have the serial number, you should be able to send it to Vox – at the very least. They’d probably be interested in seeing what component(s) failed.

I weighed up all factors and realised that my Strat, my powerful ESP and my pal’s Les Paul had all minor modifications by me. On all 3 guitars I had screwed the bridge pickups too close to the strings. Maybe not so high on the Strat, but definitely on the other 2. I lowered them slightly and noticed immediately that the overbearing belching was less – I lowered more and suddenly it was gone. For the first time the pedal sounded focused and not mushy. Obviously this pedal is more ‘input’ sensitive than all others. Maybe the Pad concept design causes this.

Now the pedal stays on the pedal board.

ps. I also have an Ibanez Tube King HT and the MI Crunch Box. The TK can do the Satch sound very well and more, as it has a wider range of EQs and a noise gate. I might keep that one for a while too… The MI Crunch Box has British voicing and therefore has a lot of mids and sounds like cardboard in comparison. I will sell that tonite on FleaBay.

Excellent news! If you got the pickup that close to your strings, I’m surprised you didn’t actually see them bend slightly from the magnets. 🙂 JK

If you read this month’s Premier Guitar (either online or in print), there’s an excellent article called “The Art of Pickup Adjustment” that I found was really great insight on adjusting pickup heights. Check it out!

Brett, Joe replied to an earlier post of yours about using a buffered pedal after your Satchurator to help condition your signal. That could be a BOSS pedal like a TU-2. But there’s a pedal built by Tone Freak Effects called the “Buff Puff” that is both a line buffer and a clean boost, built specifically for conditioning your signal, and the great Greg Howe uses the Buff Puff both as a boost and a buffer.

I’m actually considering getting one of these because of some transient noises that I’ve been getting somewhere in my chain. I haven’t narrowed down which pedal it is, but it’s clear to me that I need a buffer at the end to do some final conditioning before going into my amp.

Speaking for Joe’s latest rig he plays clean channel like I do and uses the gain of the boxes for tone. Running a gain box into a dirty amp is not a good tone. That is what an OD is for, this is not an OD. Killer nuance, articulate distortion, play something with some english on it, pinch harmonics, waver a note in a chord gets all sorts of overtones and artifacts, sometimes gets like a subtle octavia sound in there. Really cool for the discerning player. This is just one of several boxes I have in line and it is a permanent addition. I run a Fulltone Fat Boost before my OCD and before my high gains and you have to hear it not just on the OCD but the VOX JS-DS just sonic heaven. I dig this box, makes me excited about playing again. Great tones, just like Joe said about it, no hype, just fact.

I am always on the lookout for a new cool gain pedal. Bad reviews and bad videos kept me from this pedal for too long. Once I got it and ran it through the paces, I like it alot.

I run an all tube modifed Carvin V3 and this box sounds great with it. I have a good pedal board with many options plus the clean and two gain channels on the amp itself. Which I confess I hardly ever use. I play my clean channel the most and use the various pedals to push the amp and create different tones. High amp gain is high amp gain it needs nothing else, perhaps just the BBE.

I do not like running the amp near breakup or running boxes into gained up tubes, just does not sound right to me. I never use an OD after my high gains as it ruins the voice of the distortion. The Satchurator is the same for me, this box has such cool overtones and artifacts in the distortion I am wondering what is in it, at times it almost gets an octavia tone in the voice.

Dude w problems, tubes man, change your tubes. I run EL34Bs from Tung Sol they have larger glass bottles like 5881s. I use Tung Sol 12AX7s in the preamp gain stages and JAN Phillips 5751 in my clean channel. I have laos used 5751s in the high gains which will tame down fizzy gain. I went back to the TungSol AX7s as i am detuned downa a whole step and I use more darker gains and ODs.

Never run a gain box into a gained amp, recipe for crap tone. You can OD an amp on the edge of breakup but high gains sound best on clean channel and the voice they produce is better.

Digitech Whammy (only for harmonizer modes),
a Digitech Synth Wah (for heavy Wah envelope trigger),
a Vai II Wah,
(a new T-Rex Vipe Vibe will either go before the wah or in the loop pending sonic interactions),
a new Fulltone Fat Boost 3,
a new v3 OCD,
the Satchurator (pad on),
and the Rocktron Metal Planet.

In my loop I have a Carvin FX-2 used for reverb and or delays, this into a BBE Sonic Maximizer (get one!)

Fat boost sounds amazing with the OCD or the high gains, it stays on pretty much all the time, like the BBE, it’s all about options and this rig has an amazing verstility. The amp has two programmable clean boosts. A clean boost after the Satchurator really makes this puppy come alive!! I dig it. Will be a keeper on my ever changing board.

Paul, very cool that you found your tone. But for my part, all my amps were chosen because of how great they sound totally dimed. They don’t compress as much as other amps I’ve played. Granted, I’m not a metal or speed player so clean headroom to me is not as important as super sustaining gain tones.

Oh, I get it really. My amp is like on 1(master) and I hardly ever use my high gain tube distortion channels. I have the boxes just for an option when I am in the mood to play something hard core. Most of the time my high gains are off although I find the Satchurator a hoot to play. I write on Guitar Noise.com under “darkhorse”. My board I made and various FYI articles are on there about pedal chains and such.

I like versility. I was using JAN Phillips 5751s in my preamp sockets because they have 70% the gain of the usual 12AX7s, great way to take the fizz out of an amp. SRV used to do this to get more power tube warmth and less preamp gain. I still use them in my clean channel and loop tubes to keep things really clean and HD. Works really well. You would probably dig it. (tubestore.com ref 5771) My core tone is the Fulltone Fat Boost 3 and the v4 OCD, it is gained down and darker like Trower was doing in ’05 right before Fuller invented the OCD (Trower had the Fat Boost and the Dist Pro w/ gain down.) You would dig the Fat Boost mine stays on all the time. I like a dark heavy end tone even on my gains, I play a fullstep detuned w/ heavier strings (also ala Trower).

I have found the vox saturator to be unreliable. The switch actuators come loose way to easily (I had the same problem with my Vox time machine). They simply do not have the ruggedness or switch actuation necessary to handle day to day performance. I tighten the switches on a regular basis but have, on more than one time, looked down on my effects board to see a gaping hole where the switch used to be. As much as I like the sound, this is a very poor design for switching.

Never had a reliability issue form any of the Satch/Vox pedals, all had their merits. The Satchurator is basically a modified DS-1 dist and I never really liked that tone. I think the unit is limited myself. I no longer have one.

There’s a million boxes out there and a million and one tones. Everyone’s guitar is different and amp much less your touch and so on. Joe as of the last several works has gone to his custom Marshall JM410 heads for all of his gain tones, he has the Ice9 and JS-1 on his board but they do not get used. Nice new live DVD out from the Black Swan tour. Screw Chickenhead I am as sick of Hagar as I am Nugent.

There are much better more versatile gain pedals out there. If you like that DS-1 thing you will like the Satchurator. Tried as I might I could never get happy w the tone. It has like one sweet spot for the tone and gain and that is where Joe used it, no range of different tones, nothing usable, a slight off on the knobs and your tone sucks. If you want top shelf gains and overdrives, test drive Wampler Pedals, only ones that always exceed my expectations.